Relaxin...

Rowed home from work. Had a long discussion with Kevin about sound and the band. Talked about stage volume mostly. He's got some good ideas but I threw some out there as well. The reason stage volume is an issue is that we have guitar and bass amps present... PLUS their output is mic'ed then routed back through the monitors. What you're left with is sound coming from the amps themselves in addition to another blast of the same thing coming through the monitors... a double-dose. As a result, people can't hear themselves sing which leads to other problems as well since most of the vocalists key off of Kevin's vocals - if they can't hear him or themselves, there's no telling what note is coming out of their mouths.

My idea, since our room is somewhat small would be to try playing once with little or no reinforcement from the PA to see just how the instruments and their amps sound. Have the vocalists run through the PA and the monitors so they can be adjusted up and down to match the volume from the instruments and so they can hear themselves. Just experiment a bit to see how it goes. We'll see what happens. Just need to keep an open mind and have patience as we address these issues.

Mounted up my honkin-huge heatsink. It was very well made and easy to install. My system is much quieter now. The only thing I can really hear are the hard drives. Watched Friends then played drums for a bit. Also knocked out two loads of laundry. Time for bed now.